Word: brezhnevs
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...President was apparently responding to Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev's offer to Henry Kissinger. The Kissinger mission had been conducted with the usual successful secrecy. Like a contemporary Scarlet Pimpernel, the unpredictable foreign policy adviser had casually sauntered into a Georgetown salon one evening as if he did not have a care in the world. When the party was over, he jumped into a limousine and was driven to Andrews Air Force Base, where he took off for Moscow. Lodged in a spacious villa with an expansive view of the Moscow River and the city beyond, Kissinger spent...
...conference on European security, which would, in effect, be the peace conference that would end World War II. Brezhnev hopes to gather representatives from the 30 countries of Europe, plus the U.S. and Canada in one gigantic conference, to be held most likely in Helsinki. At that time, the Soviets would press for recognition of present borders in Europe. That would legitimize Russia's postwar grab of Polish lands, and Poland's seizure of German lands. It would also enhance the international status of East Germany...
With that goal in mind, the Soviets have been deeply concerned about West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's problems in persuading Bonn's Bundestag to ratify the 1970 treaties of Moscow and Warsaw (see following story). Brezhnev has personally committed his prestige to the normalization of relations with West Germany, and his entire diplomacy toward Western Europe, including the convocation of the security conference, hinges on Bonn's ratification of the treaties...
Washington and Moscow have agreed not to undertake any action during the next three weeks that could unsettle the atmosphere for the summit, but West Germany's possible rejection of the treaties or the fall of the Brandt government could seriously complicate the Nixon-Brezhnev meeting...
Butz later predicted that the Soviets might buy as much as $200 million worth of American wheat and feed grains every year for the next decade. That puffy prediction was bound to please American farmers-but how would the Russians raise the money? Butz suggested to Brezhnev that the Soviet Union might consider paying for the grains by exporting its surplus of Siberian natural gas to the U.S. It was, of course, too early to agree on a deal that would cost at least $5 billion for plants, pipelines and ships, with most of the cost borne by the Russians...